It's too bad that Tor still doesn't allow book lending on the Kindle via whispernet. There have been dozens of books I've bought that I had first read as a Kindle loan from a friend. The Hunger Games trilogy is one that immediately comes to mind.

Let publishers impose DRM. They will realize that it isn't necessary and they will strip it sooner or later, like labels did it with DMR on mp3 and iTunes. If anyone wants to get illegal copy will get one. There is no barrier, DRM just annoy legitimate buyers.

'Pirates' don't deal with the DRM pain, only legitimate buyers have to put up with this. That makes purchasing content from DRM suppliers an abusive (or at best sadomasochistic) relationship. Those content producers that have experienced the 'pirate' process have to recognize that the customer experience is vastly superior.

I think this is less a statement about impact of drm on piracy and more a statement about the lack of piracy of ebook fiction.

Ebook fiction is generally reasonably priced, and the relationship between author and reader is generally closer than in other creative works (which are almost always credited to a faceless corporation).

People who are willing to buy will do so even if there is no DRM to prevent piracy. Conversely, DRM will never stop pirates, and they will simply not buy if the option to pirate is not there.

It's logical to conclude that DRM has no effect on the intent to either buy or pirate media, and the successful sales numbers of non-DRM media bears this out. So why not intice legitimate buyers to buy more by not giving them the hurdle of a half-baked DRM that makes things harder on them?

While Baen is smaller than Tor, they've been publishing DRM free for a long time (since 2001). Tor, if I remember correctly, sold some of their first digital books through Baen's Webscription service (and still sell through Baen's ebook service. While I applaud what Tor is doing, I'm pretty sure that Baen was Tor's inspiration, but Ars always gives the credit to Tor.

I think this is less a statement about impact of drm on piracy and more a statement about the lack of piracy of ebook fiction.

Ebook fiction is generally reasonably priced, and the relationship between author and reader is generally closer than in other creative works (which are almost always credited to a faceless corporation).

I've spoken "directly" with the authors of more modern fiction books I read on G+ and other such platforms, and it adds a lot of value. It's great to be able to post a review, share it directly with the author, and discuss the book with him/her.

I've found the immediacy of the digital platform adds a lot of value to the experience overall. I happily buy (drm free) ebooks regularly, despite their generally being available pirated pretty easily. When all is said and done, if you can afford to buy them (they're generally only a couple dollars, like bus fare) it's pretty damn cheap and pathetic not to.

While things may differ some with more expensive products (movies, games), I strongly feel that books are a leader in "Those who pirate them wouldn't have bought them in the first place."

Likely little-to-none. Tor is a sci-fi and fantasy imprint, and its readership is far more technologically savvy than your average mass-market publisher, which means it understands better than most the benefits of e-publishing and the customer-hostile pitfalls to avoid.

While Baen is smaller than Tor, they've been publishing DRM free for a long time (since 2001). Tor, if I remember correctly, sold some of their first digital books through Baen's Webscription service (and still sell through Baen's ebook service. While I applaud what Tor is doing, I'm pretty sure that Baen was Tor's inspiration, but Ars always gives the credit to Tor.

But it's not "news". Baen has always been DRM free. Not only that, but they have hundreds of books that they give away totally free. Classic SF/F, first books in various series, experimental efforts all kinds of stuff.

Likely little-to-none. Tor is a sci-fi and fantasy imprint, and its readership is far more technologically savvy than your average mass-market publisher, which means it understands better than most the benefits of e-publishing and the customer-hostile pitfalls to avoid.

Interesting, this also puts Tor in the "Most Likely To Be Pirated" category as well: Technologically savvy users are much more likely to pirate things in the first place simply because they know how. It's been my experience that the less techie sorts generally just don't bother due to fear/lack of knowledge/lack of interest in dealing with files/naming/formats. As they don't find piracy a problem, that really shows how little DRM matters (in a piracy prevention role).

Interesting, this also puts Tor in the "Most Likely To Be Pirated" category as well: Technologically savvy users are much more likely to pirate things in the first place simply because they know how.

I think the sub-culture aspect of most SciFi plays into it, though: When the market feels small, every contribution seems to matter and you feel like there's a special connection between you and the writers/publishers, which makes you lee likely to pirate. If the publisher introduces DRM, however, or if the book really takes off and becomes extremely successful mainstream fare, that connection is weakened: In the DRM case, you feel like publisher doesn't return your trust, in case of success it feels like suddenly you're just one in a million instead of part of a special in-group, so your contribution matters far less.My hypothesis: The weaker this connection is, the more likely someone is to pirate a book / album / movie instead of paying for it. It's the same cliché you see in any hostage movie: Get them to know you, it'll make it harder for them you to hurt you.Which is why conventions, blogs, and active Twitter accounts (fed by the actual writers instead of some paid keyboard drone) may prevent more piracy than any DRM system.

Personal aside: My views on copyright aren't the most popular one around here (in a nutshell: I support the idea but not the current execution), still: I didn't buy from iTunes until Apple dropped the DRM, I didn't buy DVDs until I knew how to circumvent region codes and CSS "protection", I only buy eBooks in formats I know how to deDRM. Why? Because no matter what you think it about copyright and piracy: DRM is not the answer. It's stupid, doesn't prevent a single unauthorized copy, and generally annoys the very people honest enough to buy your product.

This is one reason why I seek out books published by Tor. I used a Nook Simple Touch, till I broke the screen a while ago (backpacking is hard on electronics). I haven't gotten around to replacing it yet, and have just been reading ebooks on my phone. One problem with this is that the reading experience with the Nook Android app is pretty underwhelming. So, I purchase my ebooks using the app, and then import them into Aldiko for actual reading. With books published by Tor, that's a simple process. For books published by less enlightened companies, it's a bit more of a hassle (involving getting the DRM'd file on my computer and importing into Calibre via a certain plugin, and then uploading the liberated epub file to my phone).

Net result? If I'm interested in multiple books that are published by Baen or Tor vs someone like Hachette/Orbit, I'm gonna buy the books from Baen or Tor.

I think this is less a statement about impact of drm on piracy and more a statement about the lack of piracy of ebook fiction.

I don't know about actual stats, but ebooks are regularly and easily pirated, in all the same places as music and videos. This has actually been the case for longer than music and videos, due to the drastically smaller file sizes. I remember seeing primitive ebooks in chm or lit format (produced by scanning and running OCR software) on usenet groups in the early 90s, when I was still getting my Internet connection via dailup to a SunOS server

I think this is less a statement about impact of drm on piracy and more a statement about the lack of piracy of ebook fiction.

I don't know about actual stats, but ebooks are regularly and easily pirated, in all the same places as music and videos. This has actually been the case for longer than music and videos, due to the drastically smaller file sizes. I remember seeing primitive ebooks in chm or lit format (produced by scanning and running OCR software) on usenet groups in the early 90s, when I was still getting my Internet connection via dailup to a SunOS server

They've always been pirated, but in far less volume than music and video these days. A lot of that has to do with how far more people listen to music and watch movies than read, though, which is sad.

Most who do read, it seems, are more willing to buy their books (if they are able to do so), so ebook piracy isn't nearly as much of a problem.

While Baen is smaller than Tor, they've been publishing DRM free for a long time (since 2001). Tor, if I remember correctly, sold some of their first digital books through Baen's Webscription service (and still sell through Baen's ebook service. While I applaud what Tor is doing, I'm pretty sure that Baen was Tor's inspiration, but Ars always gives the credit to Tor.

But it's not "news". Baen has always been DRM free. Not only that, but they have hundreds of books that they give away totally free. Classic SF/F, first books in various series, experimental efforts all kinds of stuff.

Tbh,the best part of Baen's business model aside from the free books is their advanced reader scheme.. Too bad the last couple of books I read using 'it weren't really the best in their series (specifically the latest 2 honorverse books). Either way,I'm fairly certain that both programs probably do more to combat piracy than DRM in most forms

I think this is less a statement about impact of drm on piracy and more a statement about the lack of piracy of ebook fiction.

Ebook fiction is generally reasonably priced, and the relationship between author and reader is generally closer than in other creative works (which are almost always credited to a faceless corporation).

Or it could be a statement on DRM's complete lack of efficacy to begin with and thus made little change to existing market conditions.

That said, I agree with your point that books are reasonably priced. I would call them cheap when compared to other forms of entertainment.

I think this is less a statement about impact of drm on piracy and more a statement about the lack of piracy of ebook fiction.

Ebook fiction is generally reasonably priced, and the relationship between author and reader is generally closer than in other creative works (which are almost always credited to a faceless corporation).

Are you kidding me? Ebook fiction is overpriced. Just look at that recent book review ars did on a authors work and look at the comments. Publishers for the most part are charging the same as or more than dead tree softcover price for ebooks. It's the odd publisher like Baen, who realize that sensible pricing will get you more money in the long run.

As well, finding fiction on the web isn't that hard to do if you know where to look.

Let's hope that all of the other publishers follow suit. In any event, if people really wanted to get these ebooks, they'd be pretty easy, DRM or not. Plus, an ebook is a small file compared to a movie. All it does it upset the paying customers.

Let's hope that all of the other publishers follow suit. In any event, if people really wanted to get these ebooks, they'd be pretty easy, DRM or not. Plus, an ebook is a small file compared to a movie. All it does it upset the paying customers.

People will pay for convenience, it's been shown time and time again. People want to pay, DRM just makes stealing it seem like the easier option.

Money is rarely the issue, it's ease of use.

While true, I don't think I'd be saying anything controversial by claiming out of my rear that ebook readers probably account for the device used by most of the fiction ebook reading people do. both kindle & nook make it stupid easy to just go buy it. If a book I might be interested in is in the 4-5$ or less range, I just tap buy & start reading. Personally I'm not too concerned with drm, ebooks in the 7-9$+ range really should have sharing enabled simply because that's the range where the price is the same for the paperback

. In the 4-5$ (or less) range, I'm not bothered by the lack of sharing. In those cases, the publisher chose to sacrifice some immediate profit from me in order in order to retain the possibility that I tell someone else to go buy it instead of lending it to them. It bothers me when publishers want to charge full paperback prices <I>and</I> lock down sharing.

There was a book someone suggested I read, apparently B&N didn't offer the books for that series because Tor only sells them from their website... I've yet to bother setting up an account with tor to download & do the motions to buy them, even when I hit a wall where I just start reading some random cheap "maybe it will be readable" book. I commend Tor on their DRM stance, but it would be nice if they could integrate it into B&N.

(involving getting the DRM'd file on my computer and importing into Calibre via a certain plugin, and then uploading the liberated epub file to my phone).

If you download the books in the Android nook software and make sure that Calibre has the nook directory in its search settings, you can go to the "books on device" view and import them directly into the library. Assuming, of course, that the plug-in is already configured.

I think this is less a statement about impact of drm on piracy and more a statement about the lack of piracy of ebook fiction.

Ebook fiction is generally reasonably priced, and the relationship between author and reader is generally closer than in other creative works (which are almost always credited to a faceless corporation).

In a vacuum, I would be inclined to agree. We don't live in a vacuum, though, and this bares out what we already knew from DRM-free music stores.

More importantly, when they say it hasn't done much, I think they mean they haven't seen any sales decline (i.e., the usual FUD about piracy costing the publisher money). This is also in keeping with what we know from DRM-free music, as well as DRM-free gaming such as that from GoG.com, the Humble Bundle, and others.

So sure, in a vacuum it speaks more to there just being less piracy in that market in general, but in the context of other markets that have also gone DRM free, the findings are consistent: DRM-free doesn't harm sales and DRM doesn't help sales (sometimes it can even lose you sales).

Digital movies are expensive? You can probably do an iTunes rental for most movies 2-3 times before it costs as much as an ebook. That's more times than most people watch any particular movie.

True, but you get, what, a couple of hours of entertainment with a movie? How much time do you spend reading a book?

Most books don't take me more time to read that 2-3 movies would take me to watch.

Very roughly, a movie rental or a book cost me about the same amount per hour. And since I rarely watch a movie more than once (unless it happens to be on TV and I'm bored), then rental is really the correct comparison. Most books I only read once, also. If could rent a book from Amazon, I would. But once you get under $10, I really just don't get that worried about whether I'm renting or owning (at least for movies and books... I re-listen to music often, so that's a whole different analysis).

While things may differ some with more expensive products (movies, games), I strongly feel that books are a leader in "Those who pirate them wouldn't have bought them in the first place."

Digital movies are expensive? You can probably do an iTunes rental for most movies 2-3 times before it costs as much as an ebook. That's more times than most people watch any particular movie.

It's not really something that's makes for a good comparison, especially since you compared renting and owning. There's also the difference in being able to practically share the experience. It's very easy to watch a movie or listen to music with your friends and family, while its a bit tougher to do any substantial amount of reading together.

Because no matter what you think it about copyright and piracy: DRM is not the answer. It's stupid, doesn't prevent a single unauthorized copy, and generally annoys the very people honest enough to buy your product.

I generally agree that DRM doesn't really stop piracy at a macro level, but you're not helping the anti-DRM argument by making obviously untrue statements like "doesn't prevent a single unauthorized copy". People are lazy. If you make them jump through even a couple hoops, some people are not going to bother. I guarantee there's a guy out there that would say something similar to "Oh, I can't just copy that movie from you because of DRM? I could go on BitTorrent? Nah, that just seems like too much trouble. I'll just fire up iTunes and pay $3.99 for the rental."

Does DRM make a significant difference in the big picture? Almost certainly not. Can it make a small difference at the edges? Almost certainly.

While things may differ some with more expensive products (movies, games), I strongly feel that books are a leader in "Those who pirate them wouldn't have bought them in the first place."

Digital movies are expensive? You can probably do an iTunes rental for most movies 2-3 times before it costs as much as an ebook. That's more times than most people watch any particular movie.

It's not really something that's makes for a good comparison, especially since you compared renting and owning. There's also the difference in being able to practically share the experience. It's very easy to watch a movie or listen to music with your friends and family, while its a bit tougher to do any substantial amount of reading together.

Hey, I understand the comparison isn't perfect. But, remember, I was originally responding to the claim that movies were more expensive than books in a meaningful way, and were more similar to games. You can watch a movie for $3.99 on iTunes. A Kindle book costs like $4.99 - $11.99. A major video game can be $20-$60. IMHO, in that analysis books and movies are more similar and games are the outlier.

Hey, I understand the comparison isn't perfect. But, remember, I was originally responding to the claim that movies were more expensive than books in a meaningful way, and were more similar to games. You can watch a movie for $3.99 on iTunes. A Kindle book costs like $4.99 - $11.99. A major video game can be $20-$60. IMHO, in that analysis books and movies are more similar and games are the outlier.

Looking at my game time stats in steam I get around 30 hours per game at average. Less then 10 hour games like Call of Duty XXIV are the exception, not the norm. To give examples:The Walking Dead - 19 hoursX-Com - 83 hoursDishonored - 39 hoursBioshock Infinite - 19 hoursDeus Ex - 38 hoursTomb Raider - 33 hours

If I assume an average price of $40 (which is very easy to achieve with steam sales*) that is $1.3 per hour. A (somewhat older) movie is $2 per hour. So, no, I quite heavily disagree that games are the outlier here, there are actually quite a bit cheaper per hour than movie rentals.(*If you buy like 25% of the games that way, if you buy all that way it is more like $25)

And nevermind books. An average novel is about 100.000 words. Average reading speed is 250 words per minute. In other words, the average person can read in 2 hours (same time as movie) about 1/3rd of a book. You would have to speed read books to get a similar price/hour as movies. But then you might just as well play movies at twice the speed, it has about the same effect.

Hey, I understand the comparison isn't perfect. But, remember, I was originally responding to the claim that movies were more expensive than books in a meaningful way, and were more similar to games. You can watch a movie for $3.99 on iTunes. A Kindle book costs like $4.99 - $11.99. A major video game can be $20-$60. IMHO, in that analysis books and movies are more similar and games are the outlier.

Looking at my game time stats in steam I get around 30 hours per game at average. Less then 10 hour games like Call of Duty XXIV are the exception, not the norm. To give examples:The Walking Dead - 19 hoursX-Com - 83 hoursDishonored - 39 hoursBioshock Infinite - 19 hoursDeus Ex - 38 hoursTomb Raider - 33 hours

If I assume an average price of $40 (which is very easy to achieve with steam sales*) that is $1.3 per hour. A (somewhat older) movie is $2 per hour. So, no, I quite heavily disagree that games are the outlier here, there are actually quite a bit cheaper per hour than movie rentals.(*If you buy like 25% of the games that way, if you buy all that way it is more like $25)

And nevermind books. An average novel is about 100.000 words. Average reading speed is 250 words per minute. In other words, the average person can read in 2 hours (same time as movie) about 1/3rd of a book. You would have to speed read books to get a similar price/hour as movies. But then you might just as well play movies at twice the speed, it has about the same effect.

This line of argument for price justification is predicated on the idea that a book has a similar production cost to a movie. With a book, there are precisely TWO people that you could make an argument as being NECESSARY to achieve professional results: an author and an editor. On top of this, you need a distribution network, so that's about US$10.95/month to start off until you get popular enough to need more than 1TB/month of bandwidth.

A movie, on the other hand, requires at least a camera with sufficient film or storage for everything, a script-writer, an editor for the script, actors, costumes, sets, post-production editor, and I'm probably missing at least a few others (distribution can be handled the same, though will require more bandwidth sooner). Even at 10k USD (approximate budget of the original Clerks), the cost of making a movie is magnitudes greater than that of producing a book, and the amount of creativity necessary on the part of the author isn't necessarily any less than that of a book author. What's more, unlike the book author that can let YOU do the work of picturing things, the script-writer has a lot more he has to spell out explicitly.

Point is, there are serious flaws in the methods I'm seeing for arguing the prices aren't reasonable and how they're being compared to other goods. The simple fact of the matter is that movies AND books are ridiculously overpriced, especially the digital versions. Books are getting better again thanks to the action taken against Apple's attempted trust, but ebooks still tend to cost more than their paperback counterparts, which is just absurd on its face. Movies are only going UP in price, and are still as inconvenient as they were 10 years ago, because they have more clout to control the government and prevent progress; so far they've been very successful.

I think this is less a statement about impact of drm on piracy and more a statement about the lack of piracy of ebook fiction.

Ebook fiction is generally reasonably priced, and the relationship between author and reader is generally closer than in other creative works (which are almost always credited to a faceless corporation).

If you look at any of the torrent sites you can find large numbers of torrents of both very current books and huge collections of fiction books of many genres. I suspect that this works in a similar way to the music world where piracy functions as a loss leader, exposing people to new genres and artists and in the end causing more legitimate sales. It is well documented that prolific pirates are also prolific buyers of whatever they are pirating.

As far as ebook pricing is concerned, it is all over the place. Some ebooks are selling for a dollar or two less than the hardback price, while some comparable authors and genres are selling for 99 cents, depending on who is doing the distribution.

I generally agree that DRM doesn't really stop piracy at a macro level, but you're not helping the anti-DRM argument by making obviously untrue statements like "doesn't prevent a single unauthorized copy". People are lazy. If you make them jump through even a couple hoops, some people are not going to bother.

You're right – I felt a bit unhappy with that phrase when I typed it. A more correct statement would probably be "DRM does not prevent unauthorized copies from showing up in all the usual places on the net within hours of the release – if not before that."

Ebook fiction is generally reasonably priced, and the relationship between author and reader is generally closer than in other creative works (which are almost always credited to a faceless corporation).

I couldn't disagree more.

Someone recommended a collection of short stories edited by Harlan Ellison from the early 1970. On Amazon the paperback is $11.95. The original was $1.99, so the price has gone up faster than inflation. The ebook version is $9.83, and on iBooks it's $11.99.

I don't think the pricing is at all reasonable.

Further, most of the authors in question are dead. I have no relationship with them, nor does anyone else. All the monies collected go directly to a "faceless corporation", which is true for most any book.

If there is a difference between media in the respect you mention, I fail to see it.

Ebook fiction is generally reasonably priced, and the relationship between author and reader is generally closer than in other creative works (which are almost always credited to a faceless corporation).

I couldn't disagree more.

Someone recommended a collection of short stories edited by Harlan Ellison from the early 1970. On Amazon the paperback is $11.95. The original was $1.99, so the price has gone up faster than inflation. The ebook version is $9.83, and on iBooks it's $11.99.

I don't think the pricing is at all reasonable.

Further, most of the authors in question are dead. I have no relationship with them, nor does anyone else. All the monies collected go directly to a "faceless corporation", which is true for most any book.

If there is a difference between media in the respect you mention, I fail to see it.

It does vary by publisher/distributor/etc, but in general his statement is true. There are very few examples in other media where there is such a relationship (not really for movies, and maybe a few shows like Firefly or other cult hits).

Part of that is purely money and celebrity. Most authors don't have the same level of celebrity as TV and movie personalities (stars and directors included). They seem to be more likely to be approachable and interact more with fans.

Obviously that's a general statement, and there are always execptions, but for the most part it's accurate.